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Donovan Richards: councilman, Queens BP candidate and now pitchman for LIC overdevelopment

QNS


City Councilman and lead candidate for Queens Borough President Donovan Richards announced his support of the Your LIC waterfront development.

The development, a project four private developers are looking to build in the 28-acre land along Anable Basin — made popular due to Amazon’s proposed HQ2 — has garnered much attention throughout what is almost a year of its public visioning sessions.

“As we battle massive inequality across Queens, the Long Island City Waterfront presents a key opportunity to create new jobs, affordable housing and much-needed community facilities,” Richards told QNS. “We need ambitious proposals that will bring significant private and public investment into communities that have long endured disparities based on their socio-economic status.”

Your LIC’s developers, MAG Partners, Plaxall, Simon Baron Development, and TF Cornerstone, were brought together by City Council Speaker Corey Johnson last year in order to create a comprehensive plan with community input well before the ULURP process.

So far, developers have revealed they plan to develop 10 to 12 million square feet of the 28-acre land with up to 15 buildings that range from 400 to 700 feet in height, or 37 to 64 stories. They’ve mentioned seven acres of public open space. The plan also calls for 50 percent of commercial space, 30 percent residential and 13 percent “community” space that would include three new public schools and space for arts and culture.

Developers say they’ve committed to 5,700 total apartments with 25 percent (or 1,400 units) being affordable, which they say will be consistent with the area’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing metrics. When asked for specific price range for the units, Your LIC Spokesperson Jovanna Rizzo said they did not have those specifics yet.

Then how are we sure these buildings end massive inequality, Donnie? And what about transit and infrastructure?

Call to reopen Engine 261 in light of Amazon deal

From the Queens Chronicle:

Even before Amazon opens its doors to 25,000 additional workers, Long Island City’s fire response infrastructure is already stretched too thin. The area needs a new firehouse, and with Amazon on the horizon, there is no longer time to wait.

Fifteen years ago, long before many of Long Island City’s high-rise towers emerged and tens of thousands of residents moved to a once industrial part of town, the city closed a longstanding firehouse dedicated to the protection of the neighborhood, Engine Co. 261.

This shortsighted move to close Engine 261 left the neighborhood highly vulnerable even at the time of its closing. The Uniformed Firefighters Association, elected officials and civic leaders alike protested the closing, and Mayor de Blasio himself — then a member of the City Council — was part of a lawsuit attempting to block the move.

Fast forward to 2018 and Long Island City has continued to transform, with new high-rise apartments and office buildings worsening the problem.

The nearest fire engine company is 10 blocks away from the old Engine 261, and the greater distance trucks must travel has meant an increase in response times, putting lives at stake — not to mention the increase in traffic and congestion due to the influx of people. Across the city, our firefighters are doing more now with fewer resources than ever. The FDNY has broken its run record for five consecutive years, and unit availability is at an all-time low.

Long Island City, more than any other neighborhood in New York and by some estimates the country, has seen an incredible amount of growth in the last decade. But unacceptably, its fire response infrastructure has not grown with it.

3 City Council hearings on Amazon

From Metro:

The New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson still has a lot of questions about what exactly will happen when Amazon HQ2 comes to Queens, and in a search for answers, the Council will host three hearings about the closed-door deal that lured the tech giant here.

At the New York City Council Amazon hearings, council members will question city officials and Amazon executives about the negotiations made in the bid for HQ2.

Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen, Economic Development Corp. President James Patchett and Amazon executives have been invited to the hearings, Corey’s office told the Wall Street Journal.

There will be three hearings in total, with the first oversight hearing scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 12 at City Hall. That hearing will be through the Economic Development Committee to look at the specific Amazon HQ2 in Queens site and how the deal between the company and the city played out.

Blissville shelter changes hands; another "hotel" on the horizon

From The Real Deal:

Brooklyn investor Shulem Herman has gone to Queens for his latest purchase.

Herman has purchased a homeless shelter in Long Island City from Lam Group for $36.5 million, according to property records. He took out a roughly $23.2 million mortgage for the purchase from Sterling National Bank.

The 154-room building used to be a Fairfield Inn hotel and is located at 52-34 Van Dam Street.

Who knew owning a homeless shelter could be so lucrative? Actually, that's been apparent for years, so we'll end sarcasm right here.



From The Real Deal:

Another day, another Long Island City hotel from Sam Chang.

The developer filed permits with the city’s Department of Buildings on Monday for a 14-story hotel with 282 rooms. The project at 52-02 Van Dam Street would span about 82,000 square feet and replace a pair of industrial buildings.

This is the latest of many hotels Chang’s McSam Hotel Group is planning for the neighborhood. The company is also building a 324-key hotel nearby at 38-39 9th Street and a 142-key hotel at 38-04 11th Street.

Wow, it's certain that tourists will flock to a hotel that is hard to get to and sits amidst 3 homeless shelters. Unless there is some kind of hidden plan here. Hmm, what could McSam be up to? End sarcasm again.

You know, this neighborhood had so much potential. Instead the city is turning it into a slum. Well, this guy thinks it's great for some reason but everyone else sees the forest through the trees.

Plaxall to develop site alongside Amazon

From The Real Deal:

Plaxall isn’t completely handing over its large Long Island City project to Amazon.

The family-run plastics company, which last year developed a 15-acre plan that appears to have been the key to luring Amazon’s HQ2 to New York, will retain a site just to the south of the tech company’s planned campus where it can develop its own commercial building, according to a memorandum of understanding between the company and the state and city’s respective economic development arms.

Plaxall... will retain the southernmost block of the larger project: a group of properties that sit on the block between 46th Road and 46th Avenue. The six property lots, which cover nearly the entire block, would allow Plaxall to build a mixed-use building slightly larger than 800,000 square feet, or a residential building of nearly 566,000 square feet.

Under the residential plan, the new building would be subject to the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing requirements, and under either scenario, Plaxall would set aside 5 percent of the space for light industrial use.

Van Bramer & Maloney in favor of Amazon before they were against it

Well that's sure interesting. Quite a rogue's gallery here!

Added trivia bonus: How many of the signatories are now in prison?

Amazon will be too much

From NBC:

Amazon could be coming to Long Island City, bringing 25,000 jobs to that part of Queens. But could mass transit handle the influx? Local city officials say the infrastructure needs to be repaired before Amazon potentially moves in. Andrew Siff reports.

Cuomo to do an end run around Van Bramer on Amazon

From Crain's:

The Cuomo administration will likely use a controversial planning process to shepherd Amazon's potential headquarters in Queens around the normal city review, Crain's has learned.

Several sources familiar with the negotiations to bring the tech giant to a sprawling office and mixed-use campus around Anable Basin on the Long Island City waterfront say the state is planning to create a general project plan to rezone the roughly 20-acre site, which today can only accommodate low-rise manufacturing uses.

That would give the state the authority to remake the area without having to secure approval from the City Council, which usually holds power over major development projects in need of a rezoning.

The general project plan still requires an environmental review, allows the community to comment in a public forum and is subject to nonbinding input from the City Planning Commission and the local community board.

The advantage for Gov. Andrew Cuomo is that the Amazon project could not be held hostage by Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, per the council's tradition of deferring to the local member on rezonings.

"I'm not just surprised, I'm angry," said Van Bramer. "I think it would be shocking if this was done in a way that bypassed the city land-use review process. This is the most top-down approach to a project I have seen so far, with no community involvement. This is the governor and the mayor and [Amazon CEO] Jeff Bezos sitting in a room together."

Amazon & Google may expand here

There are a bunch of articles out there about the possibility of Amazon and Google expanding here, so here are some of them for your perusal.

What Amazon May Mean for Queens: Gentrification and (More) Packed Trains

Local politicians grow concerned as Amazon HQ2 eyes Queens' Waterfront Plaxall property

Any zoning changes for Long Island City would hinge on local lawmaker

Bezos Turns Gritty Queens Area Glutted With Development Into 'Field Of Dreams'

Report: Google planning big New York City expansion

City: "Now that LIC is overdeveloped, let's worry about infrastructure"

From LIC Post:

The city has committed to investing millions in Long Island City under a new plan released today aimed at supporting sustainable growth in the neighborhood.

The Long Island City Investment Strategy, as the longterm plan is called, outlines the ways the city is and will be addressing practically all infrastructure in the neighborhood, ranging from parks, schools, transportation, and sewage systems.

To fund the improvements, the city is funneling $180 million into the neighborhood on top of $2.2 billion it says it has invested into the area over the years.

The city admits the impetus for its strategy comes from rapid residential development that has strained neighborhood resources and the quality of life of people living in the neighborhood since the 2001 rezoning.

The plan, additionally, stems from coordinating with multiple city agencies and engaging with the community since 2015, where the city heard concerns from distressed locals on infrastructure keeping pace with development.

Court Square condo project is is quite huge

From LIC Post:

The developer of a 67-story building that will contain 802 condo units got the go ahead from the state attorney general’s office to start selling units.

The building will be the tallest in Queens to date, with the total value of all units in the 100 percent condo-building to exceed $1 billion, according to the offering plan. The units are expected to begin closing in July 2020.

The development, called the Skyline Tower and located at 23-15 44th Drive, will consist of about 30 percent of the condo stock in Long Island City when it is complete, according to Patrick W. Smith, an agent with Stribling & Associates who focuses on new development and who is heading up the company’s first office in Queens.

A deluge of development is headed our way

From Curbed:

According to a report from Localize.city, a platform that provides neighborhood insights based on available New York City data, the city has already saw more than 12,800 new housing units open in the first half of 2018 and another 31,000 are expected to open by 2020 (h/t Wall Street Journal). In all, it is projected that New York will gain 90,000 new apartments between 2016 and 2020.

Per its findings, Localize.city reports that the bulk of these new housing units are being constructed in the outer boroughs—primarily in Brooklyn and Queens. In fact, nearly 60 percent of the new units are opening in neighborhoods Brooklyn or Queens. The only Manhattan neighborhood where a significant portion of these 31,000 new units are being added is the Lower East Side. For instance, Long Island City was ranked first among the top ten neighborhoods that are booming with new units, and by 2020, it’s expected to welcome nearly 6,400 new apartments, though Greenpoint is expected to see the biggest burst of new units by 2020. Williamsburg trailed behind Long Island City, slated to welcome 3,470 new units and Bushwick came in third place.

So what’s driving the residential boom? According to Localize, much of it has to do with the tremendous amount of permits filed by developers back in 2015, when there was a rush to get them in before the state’s 421-a tax abatement expired in January 2016. Many of the developments that are under construction now are the result of those permits and the number of new units under construction are starting to level off, though there is an uptick in the amount of units now hitting the market.

But what’s more important than merely the number of new housing that a particular neighborhood will receive is the implications it can have on the community. “New construction could mean different things in different neighborhoods,” says the report. While in the short term, residents may have to deal with the nuisances that come with construction projects (noise, dust, congestion), the long term effects could result in a shift in demographics, burdened transit systems, overcrowded schools, tension between newcomers and longtime residents, and a change in architectural style within a neighborhood.

YA THINK?

Gianaris suddenly concerned about LIC's dearth of open space

From the Times Ledger:

State Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria) and several Long Island City community organizations are urging the city to include park space in Court Square as the neighborhood continues to grow at an unprecedented pace.

Gianaris called on the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the Department of Transportation to renovate public land located underneath the Queensboro Bridge ramps between 23rd Street and Thompson Avenue and turn it into public space to reflect a proposal made in the 1999 Department of City Planning study.

“Long Island City is one of our fastest growing neighborhoods and we must ensure community needs are met as we grow,” Gianaris said Sept. 21. “More public park space must be part of the planning process and utilizing this parcel would be a great way to start.”

The public-owned lots are currently used by the city Department of Transportation and while the city can not build on them, it has proposed transferring air rights to The Lions Group, which plans on building two residential towers at 27-01 and 26-31 Jackson Ave. The Court Square Civic Association organized a rally against that plan last Saturday at the corner of Dutch Kills Street and Jackson Avenue.

Major World seeks major rezoning

From The Real Deal:

A disgraced car dealer from Queens who recently pleaded guilty to federal tax fraud is now looking to rezone one of his auto lots in Long Island City under the city’s affordable housing program.

Bruce Bendell, a former senior manager at the Major World family of dealerships, is looking to upzone the site of a shuttered Kia dealership on Northern Boulevard to make way for an 11-story mixed-use building with 244 apartments.

But the 64-year-old is facing up to three years in prison after he pleaded guilty in July for failing to report $3.5 million in receipts and payroll expenses on Major World’s 2009 tax forms with the Internal Revenue Service.

Rezoning of LIC is happening regardless

From City Limits:

Despite the city’s slow-moving plan to study Long Island City for a possible rezoning, real-estate developers are moving their residential and commercial development proposals for individual sites through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, the city’s review process for zoning changes, while community members gear up to testify against the new developments this month.

The idea of a neighborhood-wide rezoning in Long Island City has some community members and small business owners—all concerned by what some have called “overdevelopment”—wondering how long it will be before they are pushed out.

Long Island City and its residents are all too familiar with rezonings. Over the last few decades the neighborhood, including Hunters Point, Queens Plaza and Dutch Kills, has transformed from an industrial neighborhood to one hosting a mix of commercial and residential development under an ever-expanding skyline.

In 2017, Mayor de Blasio announced Long Island City as one of the dozen or so neighborhoods the city planned to rezone as part of his plan to create an estimated 300,000 affordable units. The area boasts extensive transit access with with eight subway stations, 13 bus lines, two LIRR stations and the East River ferry terminal, and its proximity to both Manhattan and the new Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island make it an ideal location for a “economically diverse, 24/7, mixed-use community,” according to the Department of City Planning website.

The study launched by the de Blasio administration overlaps with the 2001 Queens Plaza study area and parts of the 2008 Dutch Kills study area. It encompasses the Special Long Island City Mixed Use District, a special-purpose zoning district that has a mix of residential, commercial, and light industrial uses and includes the Queens Plaza, Court Square, Hunter’s Point and Dutch Kills neighborhoods. Thirty‐seven blocks of the study area fall within the Queens Plaza and Court Square sub‐districts. According to the DCP, the majority of new completed or under-construction developments are located on those 37 blocks, including an estimated 10,100 housing units, more than 1.5 million square feet of office space and 600 hotel rooms. DCP has not scheduled any public engagement events yet for this study process.

According to residents, developers are not waiting for the city’s study or the possible city-sponsored rezoning and are avoiding the community by going through “spot-rezoning,” which means changing the zoning of a single property and not including any community engagement during the planning process.

Oh, poor Jimmy!

From the Commercial Observer:

City councilman Jimmy Van Bramer presides over one of New York City’s hottest real estate markets: western Queens. And one of its submarkets, Long Island City, is on track to get 6,200 new residential units by next year and sits at the heart of crucial zoning, infrastructure, transportation and urban planning issues that affect much of the city.

The 49-year-old councilman, who represents LIC, part of Astoria, Sunnyside and Woodside, was raised in his district by a printer father and painter mother, both union members. Since taking office in 2009, he has found himself facing down developers and community activists alike, while trying to stay true to both his core principles and his working-class neighborhood roots.

Over the past few years, he’s netted some victories for his district, like a new modern library for Hunters Point South in LIC and protected bike and bus lanes along Queens Boulevard. He’s also run into controversy over development and transit issues, like when he refused to greenlight a 2016 rezoning for a 200-unit affordable apartment building developed by Phipps Houses in Sunnyside. And last year he clashed with neighbors and businesses along Skillman Avenue in Sunnyside for proposing protected bike lanes there and along 43rd Avenue after two cyclists were killed by motorists. (After getting pushback from local merchants and the community board over bike lanes replacing parking spots, he abandoned the plan. Congressman Joe Crowley—recently unseated in a surprise victory by democratic socialist candidate Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez—even weighed in on Twitter to oppose the bike lanes.)

If this is high tide, I'd hate to see a storm

From LIC Talk:

IT wasn’t the wind and rain that made Hurricane Sandy so destructive to LIC and NYC, but the unusual surge of the coastal waters, which in our case meant the East River. In a small redux, we got a taste of that yesterday around 11am in Gantry Park per the photo above. Unlike Sandy, this flooding occurred when the moon phase was not full, which traditionally causes higher tides. Not to be alarmist, but you may want to get the rafts ready, or at least the skim boards.

BQX somehow became shorter and more expensive

From Crains:

The de Blasio administration today released plans for its Brooklyn-Queens Connector, a streetcar officials envision running along the waterfront between the two boroughs. It has been delayed by complex infrastructure challenges.

The original streetcar was expected to cost $2.5 billion and run roughly 16 miles between Astoria, Queens, and Sunset Park, Brooklyn. But the updated plan calls for a shorter route to Gowanus instead and will cost $2.7 billion. That translates to an increase in per-mile cost from roughly $156 million to $248 million.

De Blasio first announced plans for the streetcar in February 2016. But as officials looked further into potential routes, they found that the rat's nest of underground infrastructure presented enormous potential for increasing costs and would need to be thoroughly studied. As Crain's reported late last year, the problem presented officials with a catch-22: By studying the infrastructure more carefully, the city insulated itself from risk in the event it had to scrap the project, but doing so caused delays and drove up costs.

The original project was supposed to be completed in 2024 and be paid for through property tax revenue as the land around the route increased in value. The updated version of the project is now expected to be operational in 2029 and would require $1 billion from the federal government, according to a report in The New York Times, which noted that the city tax revenues originally thought to be available for the BQX are being spent on other priorities, including affordable housing.

Hunters Point library besieged with delays

From the LIC Post:

The Hunters Point Library will not open until the summer of 2019 as the project continues to be besieged by construction delays.

The city agency in charge of overseeing the construction estimates that the library will be completed by the end of the year, with the Queens Library taking an additional three to six months to get it ready for opening.

The 22,000-square foot library, which has been under construction since 2015, was expected to open in the first half of 2017. However, between the complex design and issues with the general contractor it continues to be behind schedule.

The major source of the delays can be attributed to the performance of the general contractor, Triton Structural, according to Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer. “The contractor has essentially defaulted on the project.”